Blood, Sails, and Razor Blades
by Lucilla Darkate
Summary: So will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. Warnings: Slash, suicide, implied incest, R. Oneshot [Complete]


_"So much you did and so much more you would have done, aye, and all without a check or qualm, and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure."_

_-Stephen King (Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower)-  
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* * *

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_Tell me how the story begins… _

I'll tell you how it ends…in silence, like a scream…

* * *

It was a very strange and disquieting thing to have someone else's memories floating around in your head, Fred mused. He pushed his dripping hair out of his face and plucked another little blue pill off the edge of the bathtub and swallowed it without any water. Little blue pills, almost a hundred of them, lined up like little blue ships in a harbor.

He'd taken six already.

Fred hummed lightly to himself and let his head rest against the edge of the tub. His eyes drifted closed and he trailed his fingers back and forth over the surface of the murky bath water as images—_memories_—some his own, but most not, floated and flickered and danced behind his eyelids.

_A lovely, pale, lily-white body arching against him in the dark. A man's body. A cry of pleasure escaping his mouth before degenerating into soft, frantic little gasping noises…_

_Thoughts…strange thoughts that Fred knows are not his own…Passion. Need. Arousal…Love. All of it mingled with a kind of quiet despair and the knowledge that…The knowledge that…_

It was gone. The memory, and the thoughts and feelings that went with it.

Without lifting his head or opening his eyes, Fred reached over and took another pill from the edge of the tub, put it in his mouth, and swallowed it.

His thoughts skipped about a bit…_Harry smiling, his pretty green eyes behind the lenses of his tape-mended glasses, glinting with intelligence and good humor…Flower petals. The strong scent of roses crushed under the feet of a thousand well-wishers. Ginny's bright, tinkling laughter…Fire and smoke…Dead eyes the color of polished peridots behind a spider web pattern of shattered glass…Ron with a slave's torque around his neck…blood like a crimson tide...constantly flowing…_

Fred's memories were in there too, it seemed. He remembered Harry and Ginny's wedding. He had stood up there at Harry's side, he and George both, as their sister and their friend spoke their vows. Their mother had warned them against any pranks, and for once, they had done what she asked and left the dung bombs at home.

Not a month later, both of them were dead. Ginny in pieces on the battlefield…Harry made insane with _Crucio_, then finally, mercifully, murdered with a swish of Lucius Malfoy's wand and a whispered _Avada Kedavra_. His price…his vengeance, for Draco's death at the hand of some unknown member of the Order.

The rest of Fred's family, those who survived—his mother, Bill, Charlie, George, and himself—were spared. They were pure bloods, and as such, rare in the modern world. Voldemort…The Dark Lord said…Fred couldn't recall precisely what he said or how, but the knowledge was there just the same. The Death Eaters took their wands…forbid them to touch magic, except to instruct their future children. On pain of death, they were never again to touch a wand…And they were spared because Voldemort needed all the pure bloods he could get for his new…Empire of Bones. _That_ had certainly not been the way the Dark Lord put it, but it was the way Fred thought of it.

That was what he knew. What he—what _all_ of them had been led to believe.

But now…Now, Fred had these new memories. _Now_ he knew different.

He took another blue pill.

How many was that now? Eight? Ten? It didn't really matter, Fred decided. His lips were already going numb. Pretty soon the abdominal cramping would start, but…but before that happened…well, that's what the straight razor was for.

_Angelina left him shortly after being told that the scars…the scars would never leave. Fred said he understood, and he did…What was there really to understand?_

Fred hissed out a breath between his teeth and forcefully banished this memory.

It was almost instantly replaced by another…alien memory…_George was well trained in Occlumency, though he had no real talent for it…But he could guard his secrets and that's what mattered…The secrets that he was entrusted to keep…"There are times when a mind is most vulnerable," Severus said. "Sex is one…Death, in the moment before absolute death…that is another…You must learn to guard against even these._ Especially _these_."

Fred reached for another pill, but his fingers were tingly and his hands were clumsy. He sent the rest scattering across the tile bathroom floor.

It was time then. Before it was too late and he couldn't make his hands obey him long enough to grasp the razor. Before he was too weak to break the skin.

_He ran his fingers over the scars crisscrossing his face…Cursed scars that bisected both eyelids without blinding him and split his nose open without obstructing his breathing passage…A monster looked back at him…The monster cried and its grief was pitiful to behold…_

The razor was so sharp that it parted skin with the lightest of touches. Two matching vertical lines like mouths began to spit and bubble dark lifeblood. Blood that flowed into the tub and turned the water pink, swirl by swirl. Blood that flowed down his arms to drip on the floor.

_George had learned how to guard his secrets even when he was at his most vulnerable. They all had. Snape had insisted upon it…So George could do it…But then contempt and bitterness became something more and when he had Draco clinging to him and trembling beneath him…Sometimes, it was almost love…Until one day it_ was…_And he made a choice…To guard his secrets…or not…_

Fred was not so far gone that he did not comprehend the horror of this memory. He had seen it before…these stolen visions were like skipping insects on the surface of a black pond…So many things could have happened differently if George had chosen differently…but presented with the option…he chose to love…and damned them all.

One last memory, as the water turned from pink to red, as his heart began to slow, then falter, and as the darkness started to creep in with long, hooked fingers…

_George came to stand behind him and look over his shoulder. He doesn't cringe at Fred's broken image reflected in the mirror…he turns Fred around to look at him and brushes a finger under one of his ruined eyes…Catching teardrops…"Let me be your mirror now," he murmurs, and Fred nods. "I'm the only mirror you'll ever need again…" _

And in the darkness, on the bed, with George's arms wrapped around him, their legs tangled together, George's name whispered over and over into the shadows…Fred forgets for a moment, and it's almost enough…

Fred can't open his eyes now. They're too heavy. He can't feel his body except as a cold, heavy thing surrounding him…It doesn't hurt, and he wonders at that. For some reason…even with all the painkillers to ease the way, he still thought it would hurt a little. _Shouldn't_ it hurt, at least a little?

In that last instant…a moment crystallized in time between the penultimate heartbeat and the last, the memories…those stolen and those earned, meld…and there is…_George touching him in the dark…always in the dark…And even then, the light must always be off…And even then, he always closes his eyes…He creates a fantasy for himself…A fantasy riding hard and fast on his brother's back…until it is Draco's shining eyes watching him…Draco's flaxen white hair spilled across the pillow…Draco's voice murmuring in his ear…And he doesn't care that he's making love to a dead man with his brother's body because Fred doesn't have a face… _

He hasn't had one for a long time…

* * *

Blood dripped with a soft _pat, pat, pat_, slowly filling the empty stone basin on the floor beside the bathtub.

And there was silence.

/finis/


End file.
